Reformation Day – and What Led Me To Back to Catholicism

October 31 is only three days away. For Protestants, it is Reformation Day, the date in 1517 on which Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to that famous door in Wittenberg, Germany. Since I returned to the Catholic Church in April 2007, each year the commemoration has become a time of reflection about my own journey and the puzzles that led me back to the Church of my youth.

One of those puzzles was the relationship between the Church, Tradition, and the canon of Scripture. As a Protestant, I claimed to reject the normative role that Tradition plays in the development of Christian doctrine. But at times I seemed to rely on it. For example, on the content of the biblical canon – whether the Old Testament includes the deuterocanonical books (or “Apocrypha”), as the Catholic Church holds and Protestantism rejects. I would appeal to the exclusion of these books as canonical by the Jewish Council of Jamnia (A.D. 90-100) as well as doubts about those books raised by St. Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, and a few other Church Fathers.

My reasoning, however, was extra-biblical. For it appealed to an authoritative leadership that has the power to recognize and certify books as canonical that were subsequently recognized as such by certain Fathers embedded in a tradition that, as a Protestant, I thought more authoritative than the tradition that certified what has come to be known as the Catholic canon. This latter tradition, rejected by Protestants, includes St. Augustine as well as the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), the Third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), the Fourth Council of Carthage (A.D. 419), and the Council of Florence (A.D. 1441).

But if, according to my Protestant self, a Jewish council and a few Church Fathers are the grounds on which I am justified in saying what is the proper scope of the Old Testament canon, then what of New Testament canonicity? So, ironically, given my Protestant understanding of ecclesiology, then the sort of authority and tradition that apparently provided me warrant to exclude the deuterocanonical books from Scripture – binding magisterial authority with historical continuity – is missing from the Church during the development of New Testament canonicity.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, maintains that this magisterial authority was in fact present in the early Church and thus gave its leadership the power to recognize and fix the New Testament canon. So, ironically, the Protestant case for a deuterocanonical-absent Old Testament canon depends on Catholic intuitions about a tradition of magisterial authority.

This led to two other tensions. First, in defense of the Protestant Old Testament canon, I argued, as noted above, that although some of the Church’s leading theologians and several regional councils accepted what is known today as the Catholic canon, others disagreed and embraced what is known today as the Protestant canon. It soon became clear to me that this did not help my case, since by employing this argumentative strategy, I conceded the central point of Catholicism: the Church is logically prior to the Scriptures. That is, if the Church, until the Council of Florence’s ecumenical declaration in 1441, can live with a certain degree of ambiguity about the content of the Old Testament canon, that means that sola scriptura was never a fundamental principle of authentic Christianity.

After all, if Scripture alone applies to the Bible as a whole, then we cannot know to which particular collection of books this principle applies until the Bible’s content is settled. Thus, to concede an officially unsettled canon for Christianity’s first fifteen centuries seems to make the Catholic argument that sola scriptura was a sixteenth-century invention and, therefore, not an essential Christian doctrine.

Second, because the list of canonical books is itself not found in Scripture – as one can find the Ten Commandments or the names of Christ’s apostles – any such list, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be an item of extra-biblical theological knowledge. Take, for example, a portion of the revised and expanded Evangelical Theological Society statement of faith suggested (and eventually rejected by the membership) by two ETS members following my return to the Catholic Church. It states that, “this written word of God consists of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments and is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behavior.”

But the belief that the Bible consists only of sixty-six books is not a claim of Scripture, since one cannot find the list in it, but a claim about Scripture as a whole. That is, the whole has a property – i.e., “consisting of sixty-six books,” – that is not found in any of the parts. In other words, if the sixty-six books are the supreme authority on matters of belief, and the number of books is a belief, and one cannot find that belief in any of the books, then the belief that Scripture consists of sixty-six particular books is an extra-biblical belief, an item of theological knowledge that is prima facie non-biblical.

For the Catholic, this is not a problem, since the Bible is the book of the Church, and thus there is an organic unity between the fixing of the canon and the development of doctrine and Christian practice.

Although I am forever indebted to my Evangelical brethren for instilling and nurturing in me a deep love of Scripture, it was that love that eventually led me to the Church that had the authority to distinguish Scripture from other things.

You guys have Jesus. We worship Jesus. Worlds of difference.

Well, this is encouraging. It's a start that you are able to recognize the difference. Now, you guys need to learn what it means to have Christ.

Philippians 2:9-11 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

However, not every knee that bows belongs to a believer. Some will only bend the knee and confess that Jesus is Lord under duress. It will be too late then, even when they reach the point where they acknowledge what they've refused to admit for so long.

As far as having the Son.....

1 John 5:11-13 11And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Well, then, let's toss out our Bible and lean rather heavily on:

That's the problem with the Catholic church. They've already done that and it's gotten them nowhere but into a lot of unsupportable doctrines and teachings. You toss Scripture at your own peril.

John 5:37-40 37And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

I cannot recommend enough the Kittel Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, which was given to me as an ordination present. It is most definitely NOT a Catholic work. If you like this stuff as much as I do, you will take one of the ten volumes(!) to bed with you just to browse. I'm serious, this is great stuff, though not all the articles are of the same quality, none is bad, and some will blow your mind.

Scriptural and Patristic Greek diction is not only affected by Koine "as she is spoke", but by the LXX. One of the conjectures which seems to merit a high level of confidence is that the καλεω words -- including "ecclesia" and "paraclete" -- were influenced by the Hebrew word QaHaL and its cognates.

The "QaHaL Y**H" is the 'called out of -- a name even I will not type -- the Adoshem, the LORD. The very phrase reminds us of the assembly outside the camp near Horeb/Sinai.

So we have three issues to deal with: Παρακλητος (and all the related words) in secular Koine, in the LXX (and therefore the words it translates in the MT), and in what I think of as the emerging Christian, NT, Patristic "technical vocabulary."

Kittel spends pages on this. But what seems to emerge are two themes:

(1) In the OT/MT it means the "comforter" not only in the strict sense of one who gives fortitude - strength - courage, but in our usual sense of one who puts us at ease by 'making us comfortable,' especially in a time of grief or affliction. But even there I think one will find overtones of "champion" (one who will fight for one's cause) and advocate.

(2) Advocate. And here we are to think of a Greek or a Roman trial, where one might hire a "mouthpiece" who would summon the assembly and 'call out" for one's cause.

Our case for "apostello" would be a lot easier to make if John had, in John 20:21, not used both the apostello verb AND πεμπο in the same verse.

Still my (full-disclosure: post my becoming a Catholic) conclusion is that what we have here is the early stage of the development of a technical vocabulary, a 'jargon'.

To me, the way to limp through this resurrection appearance narrative is this

TWICE IHS blesses them with a greeting of "Peace be with you;"; in between the greetings he shows them his hands and his side.
He announces that as He was sent (form of 'apostello'), so he sends (form of 'pempo') them.
He breathes on them and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit (Πνευμα).
He gives them at least some details of their "commission": whose soever sins ye remit ....

My personal opinion is that to 'get' what "Apostle" means, we have to get a world where communication was rarely faster than a human could travel. The closest contemporary legal concept is an "agent".

And the maxim of the law is, "The Principle is responsible for the acts of the Agent." So if a REAL State Farm agent sells me a policy but pockets my premiums, State Farm is still on the hook when my house burns down.

Things would have HAD to be like that in secular affairs. I am a petty king of some tributary to Rome. When Caesar's "Apostle" shows up, I treat him as if he were Caesar, and he and I view the agreements we reach as agreements between me and Caesar. And when I send "my man" to go deal with some fractious city, I usually would just have to tell him, "Look, I trust you. Find out what their beef is, do the right thing, and get them to pay their damn taxes. See you in a month. You need my ring, or can you do it without that? How about a century of psychopathic soldiers-- you want that? I sure hope not."

So, by MY reading, a "Paraclete" MOSTLY represents us to God, while an "Apostle" MOSTLY represents God to us..

So the Pope and the Holy Spirit are not in the same business,or, at least with respect to whom they are representing,they are representing different parties.

AND THAT is an example of why we have to ride loose to the analogical language we must use in talking about divine things. What ever you may think of us, Catholics really do trust that the Pope and the Holy Spirit are playing for the same team, even if they play different positions.

Would you say that all believers are told to be a messenger or one sent forth to spread the gospel?

Yes and no.

Don't you HATE that? :-)

(YOu didn't expect "War and Peace" did you?)

As far as I can ascertain from I Cor 12 and Eph 4:11-13 is that NOT all havre an apostolic ministry in the fullest sense, but still we are all apostles in the sense that our manner of living will reflect on God and on the Gospel.He still binds himself to our acts,in that when we we be have disgracefully, he bears the insult and contempt which follow.

My neighbor and friend, BL, "tried" going to church in a local Baptist congregation, but quit because he saw what he thought was sin and hypocrisy. (He'd probably faint in a Catholic church.)

But when Paul asks, "Are all Apostles?" I think he expects the answer "no." And, to use his analogy, when my big toe hurts, or when my stomach and respiratory system are not up to snuff, my discourse here will be compromised. But I don't ask my big toe to read my Greek Testament or my lungs to type on my key-board.

And when the head of our RCIA program says he's worried if I am qualified to teach at all, I'm okay with that because I can still write and correspond, and it's his job to worry about that, while it's mine to look for chances to talk about the Love of God.

It is, after all, in Him that I put my trust.

Jesus is our only Paraclete and anyone who is sent to spread the gospel is an Apostle. The disciples of Jesus became Apostles when they were sent out.

>>So the Pope and the Holy Spirit are not in the same business<<

The pope is an imposter Mark.

>>Catholics really do trust that the Pope and the Holy Spirit are playing for the same team, even if they play different positions.<<

The problem with that is that Christ told us to go to the Father “in His name”. He gave us power of attorney. When we go before the Father He sees Jesus. Just as a bank would be dealing with someone who had given me power of attorney. Christ lives within us thus we have no need for a “pope”.

>>NOT all havre an apostolic ministry in the fullest sense<<

That’s true, each has their own calling within the church. Some teachers, some elders etc. But those who feel called to spread the gospel to others are Apostles. As you said some will also be Apostles to a lesser degree.

The RCC is still restricting the direct relationship Christ wants with His true church which are simply those who have accepted Him as Lord and Savior. Jesus suffered and died to have that personal relationship with those who He calls His. He wants us to have that relationship with Him.

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